Create a Beautiful Maintenance Free Garden

Ideas to create a low or even no maintenance garden; artificial grass, plastic fencing, low maintenance shrubs, more hard surfaces and no fish in water features.

The benefits of a pleasant garden
minus the many hours of upkeep

With so many people short of time, or finding it difficult to spend
hours gardening perhaps due to a medical condition, there’s a
growing desire for low maintenance gardens. Many would like a
relaxing, nature-filled space but don’t necessarily want or are
able to spend the time necessary to keep it neat and tidy.

What no or low maintenance options
are there?

Firstly, unless completely paving over a garden, no maintenance at
all might be a tall order but cutting it to the absolute bare minimum
is certainly possible.

Lawn

A considerable time sink when it comes to gardening, at the very
least lawns require frequent mowing. Many householders find
themselves out in the garden with the mower at least once a week from
early spring to sometimes well into autumn.

One option is to pave it over or replace with decking, but if you
like the idea of a lawn minus the maintenance then artificial
grass is well worth considering.

Techniques have advanced to the point where more people are turning
to artificial surfaces and enjoying a very low maintenance yet
lifelike lawn.

Hard landscaping options

Plants and beds take up a lot of gardening time what with planting,
weeding and pruning so maybe look to replace some planted areas with
hard landscaping such as patios, decking or paving.

You may not want to lose some colour and greenery completely, but
reducing the amount of the garden given over to plants will obviously
reduce the time you spend tending them. Not only that but judicious
use of landscaping can make things look interesting such as creating
extra levels and other techniques.

‘Harder’ hard landscaping for
even lower maintenance

There’s a basic truism regarding hard landscaping; the ‘harder’
the materials, the less maintenance is required. So decking and
gravel, being ‘softer’ than paving, will require more maintenance
such as scrubbing clean and repainting in the case of decking, and
raking and topping up in the case of gravel.

Paving slabs, on the other hand, can be pretty much left alone apart
from the occasional sweep or once over with some warm water and a
stiff brush.

Plastic fencing

Traditional wooden fencing requires maintenance in repainting or
re-coating, occasional replacements of fence panels, and eventually
the entire fence.

By contrast, plastic fences offer a maintenance free option and
modern designs won’t fade over time spent in sunlight – and they’re
very strong compared to wood.

No fish in the pond

You may have to part company with the fish if you have any in a pond.

A fish-free pond helps reduce the need for pumps and filters that in
themselves require maintenance and occasional renewal, and ponds
without fish tend to suffer weed and algae issues much less
frequently.

Plants

Most of the work in the garden – apart from mowing and generally
tending grass – is centred on weed control in borders and maintaining
certain types of plants such as herbaceous perennials.

These often require copious amounts of staking, lifting and cutting
back. To reduce maintenance, replace these with shrubs.

They’re easy to plant, especially through a weed-suppressing
membrane, and if it’s covered in a layer of mulch such as bark or
gravel it could last several ‘seasons’ before the mulch requires
attention such as topping up.

Weeds find it much harder to establish themselves in mulch, and are
easy to remove with a hoe as opposed to spending hours on your hands
and knees pulling them out of soil beds.